The papaya juice is excellent, creamy and sweet, reminiscent of the beverage served at New York’s old Orange Julius stands. The hot dogs are dense and meaty with a beguiling garlic taste and a casing that pops with juice when you bite into it. The buns that encase them, although nicely toasted, are so bland that we often discard one bun for each two wieners and eat double-meat dogs with all the fixings.

77% Approval Rating (31 votes)

Scorecard

Highlighted Reviews

"A tiny streetcorner eat-shop with an insistently happy, eye-aching red and yellow color scheme, Papaya King seems perpetually mobbed by hordes of hungry people pushing their way to the order counter, then to a space at the stand-up eating shelf at the window. The line ..."
[Read More]

Michael Baily

July 31, 2009

"In the sixties and seventies, when I lived on East 87th Street, Papaya King was the king of hot dogs of the entire Upper East Side, and Yorkville, as this neighborhood used to be called. I grew up in this neighborhood and, to this day, fifty years later, I still think ..."
[Read More]

Everett Logan

November 03, 2007

"First of all, the editorial review is incorrect. Gray's Papaya (not Gray's Papaya King; there's no King in the title) has nothing to do with Papaya King except for being an imitator. It did not "secede" from Papaya King. Papaya King is the original and Gray's is ..."
[Read More]